Game Design 2012 - Sending Zombies, Shadows and Peace to CHI

After my semester visit at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) of Carnegie Mellon University, this is the second year I taught the Game Design course at the University of Madeira. As usual, there are  some edges that can be polished and few things to be improved. Overall, I think it worked reasonably well. The course is based on Jesse Schell's approach to game design and emphasizes the game design elements as opposed to technological development. We basically build on the existing skillset of the students to deliver good entertaining experiences. I divide the course in two main blocks that balance more traditional lectures and exercises on the basics of game design using traditional games, and a one month group project in which students constitute a game studio and produce a number of portals, that is different types of games that work as gateways to transmedia worlds.

During this final project, students from different backgrounds such as informatics, HCI, entertainment technologies and graphic designers are mixed together in 8-10 student groups. Students are autonomous in defining their own game studio identity (logo, roles, etc) and are given a design challenge that they have to solve using two different game supports: a traditional game (using cards, dice, boards or other traditional elements); and an interactive experience. All student "game studios" work under very tight time constrains to design, implement, playtest, iterate, and deliver these 2 game experiences in 5 weeks. This year's design challenge was based on the 2013 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) student game competition. Each team had one challenge for which they would submit a paper to the CHI competition:

1. Games for a Purpose: Games submitted to this category should be games that are designed not just to entertain, but also to accomplish some end goal. (...)
2. Innovative Interface: Games submitted to this category should be games that push the boundaries of current interface practice. (...)
3. Innovative Game Design: Games submitted to this category should be games that push the boundaries of current game mechanics and/or design. (...)

1. Games for a Purpose: Peace Master and Peace Link by Peace by Peace studio. This group of students set their games in the following context:

"Every year Peacove, the old wise dove, flies all over the world hand-picking the right people for the unique school, the International School of Peace. This school takes its candidates on a journey to understand, learn and convey peaceful and healing qualities training them to balance the world. (...) This year, you were picked by Peacove to come into the International School of Peace! (...)"

The interactive system developed is a MS Kinect based game to enable the players to understand the importance of peaceful cooperation in a full body interaction paradigm. The studio also designed and built a board game to engage players in solving as much conflicts as possible through healing skills toward having a world in peace (video link).

2. Innovative interface: Umbra: Tree of Life and Umbra: Shadow Warriors by Shadow Cast Studio.  The studio envisioned a world where interaction happens through casting shadows:

"The land of Umbra has always been dark and gloomy. Native shadow people subsist through the help of magical fireflies, mystical and noble creatures that radiate light and vitality. These fireflies are the only source of hope for the struggling shadows; only through the fireflies’ light can the shadows exist and see themselves."

The studio was tasked with designing and implementing a computer-based game to showcase an innovative semi-transparent dual-projection surface platform, as well as a board game with a matching theme and core mechanic: shadows. The paper submitted by the team based on the dual projection shadow game was one of the 9 student game papers accepted (out of > 125 submissions) for presentation at CHI 2013. A very good result for this team and the game design course itself (video link).

3. Innovative game design: Fall of Human: Meat Factory and Fall of Human: Uprising by BlackBox Studio. This team designed two different games, one based on traditional cards and one based on an interactive surface, that could be both played independently or combined with each other. The studio proposed the action to happen in this context:

"The apocalypse has destroyed the world. When the human found the zombies living with them in the underground city of Zion, they were initially wary of these creatures. But soon they realised that the undead were not very bright began a massive enslavement program of the Zombie neighbours. An entire industry spawned from the zombie enslavement. You want a Zombie for any meanial task, just go to nearest Meat Factory and assemble the Zombie you need!"

By means of the reacTIVision software and so called fiducial markers on the back of the cards, they linked the card game - which allowed the collection of meat parts to assemble a full zombie - with the interactive surface, where the collected cards could spawn custom made zombies to defeat humans in their uprising (video link).

As some say... "the best way to learn is by doing" and "your first 20 games will be rubbish anyway...". This year I had an amazing mixture of brilliant students (both designers and programmers) and the results speak by themselves. Special thanks also to Monchu Chen and Yoram Chisik for helping out as "clients" and advisors for the student teams.

Reference:

Umbra: Beyond Avatars: A Gaming Installation using Shadows. A. Goldman (Univ. of Madeira, PT), D. Teixeira, S. Tranquada, J. Silva, A. Alves, B. Han, J. Diaz, C. Camacho